U.S. Pat. No. 6,792,545, assigned to the Assignee of the present application, discloses a system and method for performing secure investigations of networked devices over a computer network. The devices to be investigated, however, may or may not be connected to the network when the investigation is to be performed. Accordingly, what is desired is for such devices to periodically indicate their presence to a central server when they are connected to the network.